I love that the hubby tolerates my complete obsession with male/male fan fiction. Although there are moments when I’m not sure if he’s trying to change the topic, be funny or is actually deaf… We were watching a commercial that said something about self-publishing books and I said out loud, I wonder if they’d publish male/male fiction. He said, “Mailman fan fiction?”

I think I love him more every day.

Which is either pretty awesome or pretty gross.

——

I’m having a good (too good?) time on Facebook playing with my friend’s husband. We’re both huge Potterheads, horror fans and like ghosts and other scary things, so we’ve been bonding. She’s not into any of the paranormal / horror stuff and has a great sense of humour regarding our shared obsessions.

It’s nice to have friends that understand that not everything is flirting, or sexual in nature… even if it includes writing mailman fan fiction.

——

I have to go to Pittsburgh for work next week and I’ve been slacking on the Ukrainian learning for a while. We have a new employee who has made my life a complete and utter shitshow. I’ve fallen so far behind at work that I’ve been working late and going in early. All because of one person. It’s insane.

It doesn’t help that one of my coworkers - one I thought I was friendly terms with - became an uber bitch because I moved downstairs to work with my department. She’s keeping important accounting data from me and thinks she’s my boss. Riiiiiiiiight. There’s been some arguing as to who can lay claim to me: service or accounting. I have pushed hard for service, since I have very little to do with my fellow accountants. It shouldn’t be like this. The worst thing is everyone hates that coworker. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E. Dude, if I’m ever her boss, I won’t be. Firing her will be my first official act as controller.

So… as always, I push the Ukrainian aside because it’s not a priority. It’s a want, not a need. It’s hard to balance what I should be doing with what I want to do. And what I want to do is write more Drarry fic and knit my Quidditch sweater. Not study. Especially not after a shit day at work.

Anywhoooo. I bought those books in the picture for the flight to Pittsburgh. I figure they’re small, they’ll travel well, and they’re right at my vocab level, give or take.

Now, I just need to decide if I can live with just my iPad or need to drag along my laptop. I have a feeling I’m leaving both behind and surviving with just my phone. It’s four days and I have a lot of Ukrainian to try to catch up on. Same with the knitting. It’s just that it’s HARD to write pr0n on the iPhone and it’s even harder to publish. (10 kudos so far on the new one! WOO!)

I really loved the way in which Harry & Draco got together at first, not really talking just being there for each other.

Then being arrested and losing hope.

And then Harry’s testimony! That part totally had me crying for Harry & Draco.

I normally don’t like Fics where they fall for each other so quickly, but the way you wrote them, it felt right, and believable in the “fic” world.

So thank you very much for a different outlook on the immediate aftermath of Draco & Harry post war!

Many kudos and I look forward to reading more of your work.

——

Working on a 12 hour italki language challenge and a 90 day language challenge… That’s a LOT of Ukrainian filling my week, but at $97 to enroll in the 90 day and over a hundred bucks in italki tutoring, I’m finally seeing some results. I’ve got two different tutors right now: One I’m very comfortable speaking with and one that I’m sure will be good to go over grammar drills with, judging by the amount of written homework she keeps assigning. The 90 day challenge cumulates in a 15 minute video conversation so speaking has to be a major priority, but that tutor’s only available at 5 AM. The Grammar tutor is available in the afternoons. I really wish they were switched, but…

My major driver right now, is that there’s airline tickets on the line. I could fly to Ukraine for free if I “win” the challenge. I’m assuming the major thing is to completely rock the challenge and be as fluent as possible, so I’m going to kill myself learning the language if that’s what it takes.

——

Using the feedback from that comment above has lead me to tear apart the second Drarry fic I was almost ready to publish. I definitely have trouble with the two of them suddenly forgiving each other and falling into bed within hours of reconnecting when I read it in other fics. It’s a huge issue in any fandom when you’re writing about characters with a lot of history. They already know each other so all the verbal/emotional foreplay has been had. In my first Drarry fic, I had to put a bit of a fast-forward on the enemies to lovers thing because of the timing of the post-War events. I can’t imagine the Wizarding World would have waited to capture and put the Malfoy men on trial, but it was important that Draco and Harry had a solid relationship BEFORE Draco’s arrest. In this second one, I have more time to play with, so I’m going to drag it out until the last chapter.

I spent the eight hours in the car, driving back and forth from Woodstock, thinking about how to make it real between them at a ridiculous snail’s pace. I think I nailed it, but I can’t wait to tear into the draft and fix it.

——

Speaking of Drarry, I’m going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for a long weekend! I’ve been sorted into Ravenclaw on Pottermore (and several other website quizzes), so I decided to knit myself a Quidditch sweater! I’m so excited to knit such a big project for myself and one with such a tight deadline. This will be so much fun! I suppose I could buy one, but the movie colours are not the same as the book colours and I’m doing this by the book, as the saying goes. (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA)

On that note - maybe I should go read some Harry Potter (Ukrainian version, of course) and work on some vocab…

I have this (bad?) habit of letting people back into my life when I probably shouldn’t. Sometimes, I’m just not meant to be friends with some people despite my stupid determination to do so. Aaaaand sometimes it takes me six or seven tries to rekindle relationships that are better left dead before I come to the inevitable conclusion that I am a dumbass and that I should let them go for good.

Of course, there are some people who remain in my life who probably shouldn’t be there. The inexplicable ones.

Exhibit one: Silk Shirt Boy, he of FNFTF fame… which I can’t remember writing about here, but the tl;dr version is that FNFTF is more along the lines of friends with benefits than anything else. We might have been the original poster children for FWB… At any rate, we were friends. We dated. We broke up. He broke my heart. We managed to stay friends. We fell into bed. We fell out of bed. We managed to stay friends. Now, after almost exactly twenty years without seeing each other, we went back to the Denny’s where it pretty much all began.

I can’t write about today without divulging too much that’s really nobody’s business, so let’s just say that I’m glad we took the chance and met up.

SQUIRREL!

——

While I’m talking about things that happened today, I managed to have a whole conversation with my grandparents in Ukrainian. Granted, they didn’t answer, but I was able to tell them that I was learning Ukrainian and that I wanted to go to Ternopil to see where they used to live.

It wasn’t great Ukrainian, but it was Ukrainian. I was able to roll my R and make the hairball sounding noise just fine.

I haven’t really done much studying - too busy trying to get the hang of the new work schedule still - but I will be doing the italki challenge in June again. Hopefully, I can dust off my rusty vocab and be functional for those twelve hours…

I can’t tell you what Harry Potter / circumcision rabbit hole I jumped down with both feet a few weeks ago - and fuck me if that isn’t possibly the weirdest sentence I have ever written in my entire fucking existence to this point - but there is a very nice picture out there of a totally nude Daniel Radcliffe. Who is uncircumcised. If you care about that sort of thing.

(And the voices in my head just started arguing that “If it’s good enough for the Chosen One, it’s good enough for me…” *shakes fist at anti-circ friends*)

For the record, don’t do Harry Potter fanfic research whilst trying to keep up with yet another argumentative thread on Facebook about circumcision, kids, it’s like… I have no fucking idea. Drunk googling probably couldn’t have gotten me to that picture even if it was my sole objective to turn the computer on.

So… Um…

Change of topic, yeah?

Hmmmm. What could I possibly say to top that little revelation?

Yeah, I got nothin’…

I like the new job a lot more now I’m able to play without much adult supervision. I’m finding a lot of things that the previous person(s?) hadn’t been doing, but that’s because I’m approaching this position from an accountant’s POV, not a dispatcher’s. That’s not a slam against the most recent person at all, because I actually like them, but they don’t have the accounting background to see these things and understand the impact they can have. They don’t care that I’m finding their mistakes, and I’m having a blast finding them.

Of course, we’ve already had to have the “GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” chat, which is even more fascinating because I was told I wouldn’t like that person. I actually like them quite a bit.

You can graduate high school but you can never leave.

The best part of all this ridiculous drama is that EVERYBODY has decided they can talk to me about everyone else. It’s absolutely fascinating. I’m just sitting there, absorbing it all, and promptly forgetting it as soon as I get in the car.

I was nervous for a while that I had made the wrong choice, but eh… I’m going to be just fine there.